Brownie Troop's Letter To Mayor Gets Immediate Results

MAMARONECK, NY — A group of determined girls crushed the cynical notion that you can't fight city hall and proved that sometimes you don't have to fight city hall at all.

The Girl Scouts in Brownie Troop 2974 at Daniel Warren Elementary School wrote a letter to Village of Mamaroneck Mayor Tom Murphy for safety improvements on the crosswalk that connects to Florence Park.

"Several of our troop members use this crosswalk everyday," the Brownies wrote in their letter to the mayor. "But cars rarely stop for us to cross safely."

Troop 2974 Leader Vanessa Carlson told Patch that the letter was part of the Girl Scouts Brownie "Quest Journey," in which the girls earn badges through a journey to help make the community a better place. Carlson said the Brownies didn't have to look far for the perfect place to start.

"A lot of the members of the troop use this crosswalk every day, not just to get to school, but also to get to their favorite park," Carlson said. "My daughter and I probably use the crosswalk four times a day."

Because the crosswalk isn't at an intersection and is located between two bends in the road, drivers don't always yield to pedestrians. "It's a major thoroughfare," Carlson said.

One of the aspects of the Quest Journey is to find issues that you can't necessarily fix yourself. Carlson explained that this helps teach the scouts to work cooperatively and empowers them for a lifetime of speaking up when problems need to be addressed.

After discussing which issue they could use a little help solving, the girls landed on the problem of cars not stopping at the crosswalk, and they decided to start at the top.

Mayor Tom Murphy immediately brought the troop's request to DPW General Foreman James Barney.

"There is nothing we value more than the safety of our kids," Murphy said. "I appreciate the DPW staff sharing those values and reacting quickly to make that crossing safer and more pedestrian friendly."

The department worked quickly indeed.

"We installed new, permanent, Hi-Visibility pedestrian signs on both sides of the street, in both directions as well as 'Pedestrian Crossing Ahead' signs approaching the crosswalk," James Barney, the General Foreman at the Village’s Department of Public Works, explained.

Mayor Murphy reached out within a day or two of receiving the letter, Carlson said. He even volunteered to speak to the troop at some point in the future. In the meantime, things were getting done.

"A few days later, a neighbor sent a picture of one of the posts going up, I think," Carlson said. "We were all so excited that it was really happening."

Brownie Troop 2974 was ready to learn about issues of compromise and diplomacy. Instead, they may have stumbled on the exact right issue to petition the mayor — Murphy has made issues of pedestrian safety a priority since even before his tenure as mayor.

The Brownies took another lesson away from the experience.

"They decided their idea was so good that once the mayor heard about it, it got done right away," Carlson said.

The troop has already been looking forward to other ways to help the community, including helping with a food drive for a local animal shelter. The Brownies at Daniel Warren Elementary School have also set their sites on a certain stubborn pothole — after all, they have friends in high places.